Dubliners (Harper Audio Edition)

James Joyce revolutionized twentieth-century writing with his "stream of consciousness" technique. While ingeniously innovative and experimental, he was also a keenly precise chronicler of the people, places, and sounds of his native Dublin. In Dubliners, a cast of 15 internationally famous stage and screen actors perform stories that make up a brilliant journey over a human landscape that captures the bleakest of despair to the most blinding of epiphanies.

Ulysses

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel. It traces the early life of Stephen Dedalus and his inner struggle with the oppression of Irish society and the Catholic church, ending with his awakening as a poet and writer and self-imposed exile from Ireland.

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

Susan says:"Nicole Kidman does a fantastic reading"

Publisher's Summary

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century. Although best known for Ulysses and The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he also wrote a number of shorter works. Chief among them is "The Dead," which was published as part of a collection in 1914.

Like many of his stories, "The Dead" develops toward a moment of painful self-awareness and spiritual awakening which Joyce described as an "epiphany." Most critics consider this the finest of his short works and often describe it as "a masterpiece." One critic called it "Perhaps the greatest written in the English language." In 1987, John Huston directed a movie version as his last feature film. In 1999 it became a Broadway musical. After a successful run on Broadway, the play won a Tony for Best Book.

Public Domain (P)2011 Jimcin Recordings

What the Critics Say

"With a sure touch, beautiful language and the omniscient and impersonal narrator favored in the last century, The Dead is the equivalent of an entire Flaubert or Balzac novel encapsulated in a short story. It shares with novels of hundreds of pages the capture of an entire social world....There is an unforced beauty in the dialog unparalleled by other modern authors." (The Ethical Spectacle)

This is one of Joyce’s best and most approachable works. I like Ulysses but it takes a lot of concentration. The Dead has many of the best aspects of Joyce but is short and easy to listen to. The narration was quite good, but Joyce is particularly challenging to read aloud, and this narration was not quite up to the writing. If you haven’t read any Joyce, this is an excellent place to start.

'The Dead' is wonderfully rich and affecting and is rightly regarded as a masterpiece of short fiction. Unfortunately it is spoiled here by having what sounds like an American narrator who, for me, fails to express these qualities. To compound this, there are also some absolute howlers of mispronunciation (e.g. Connaught/ Connacht).

This beautiful story deserves an excellent, standalone, unabridged reading by one of the many superb Irish actors who could do it real justice. Now that the copyright on Joyce's work has been lifted, how about it?

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